Daily Number

60,366

February 9, 2011

African-Americans owned 60,366 businesses in New Jersey in 2007, according to just-released statistics from the U.S. Census bureau, with revenues of $4.354 billion. That represents a 66.4 percent jump in the number of New Jersey-based black-owned businesses since 2002, which was the last time the Census Bureau conducted a similar study. However, it represents only a 36 percent increase in revenues for those businesses.

Nevertheless, New Jersey ranked 11th in the country in terms of African-American businesses. The nation as a whole has 1,921,907 black-owned businesses with revenues of $137 billion.

New Jersey’s number of black-owned businesses was higher than neighboring Pennsylvania's, which had 44,710, an increase of 80 percent since 2002. But it was far lower than New York, which boasts 204,093 African-American businesses, with revenues of $12.9 billion. When looked at regionally, instead of by state, the New York/New Jersey metropolitan region had the nation’s highest number of black-owned firms, with 234,023 companies, or 11.7 percent of companies in the region. The Philadelphia/Camden/Wilmington region was fifth in the country, with 41,617 firms, or 8.7 percent of companies in that region.